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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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Sam Hamill was born in 1943 and raised in Utah. He attended the University of California–Santa Barbara, where he served as the editor of the university’s literary magazine. In 1972, with money from a prize he was awarded for editorial excellence, he cofounded Copper Canyon Press along with Tree Swenson and William O’Daly.

Hamill also published four books of literary prose, including A Poet’s Work: The Other Side of Poetry (Broken Moon Press, 1990), and many works of translation, including Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (Shambhala Publications, 2005) and Matsuo Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior (Shambhala Publications, 1998). He edited several volumes of poetry as well, including The Gift of Tongues: Twenty-five Years of Poetry from Copper Canyon Press (Copper Canyon Press, 1996).

About Hamill, Hayden Carruth wrote, “No one—I mean no one—has done the momentous work of presenting poetry better than Sam Hamill. His editing and publishing, his criticism and translations, his own very strong and beautiful poems have been making a difference in American culture for many years.”

Hamill served as the editor of Copper Canyon Press from 1972 until 2004. In 2003, he began Poets Against the War, a movement of poets protesting the invasion of Iraq, and edited an anthology of the same name, Poets Against the War (Nation Books, 2003). He also served as the director of the Port Townsend Writer’s Conference for ten years.

Hamill received numerous honors and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, as well as the First Amendment Award from PEN USA, the Stanley Lindberg Award for lifetime achievement in editing, and two Washington Governor’s Arts Awards, among others. He died in Anacortes, Washington, on April 14, 2018.

Together, we enter the roughed-inroom beside our cabinand begin our toil together:she, cutting and staplinginsulation; I, cuttingand nailing the tight rowsof cedar. We work in a silencebroken only by occasional banter.I wipe the cobwebsfrom nooks and sills, workingon my knees as though this prayerof labor could save me, as thoughthe itch of fiberglassand sawdust were an answerto some old incessant questionI never dare to remember.

And when the evening comes onat last, cooling our armsand faces, we stopand stand back to assessour work together. And Iremember the faceof my father climbing downfrom a long wooden ladderthirty years before. Hewas a tall strong saplingsmelling of tar and leather,his pate bald and burnedto umber by a sunthat blistered the Utah desert.He strode the rows of coopswith a red cocker spanieland tousled boy-childat his heel. I turn to lookat my daughter: her mopof blonde curls catchesthe last trembling lightof the day, her lean bodysways with weariness. I try,but cannot rememberthe wisdom of fourteen years,the pleasures of thatdiscovery. Eron smiles.

At the stove, we wash upas the sun dies in a candle-flame.A light breeze tearsthe first leaves of autumnfrom boughs that slowly darken.A squirrel, enraged,castigates the dogfor some inscrutable intrusion,and Eron climbs the ladderto her loft. SuddenlyI am utterly alone,I am a childgazing up at a father, a fatherlooking down at his daughter.A strange shuddercomes over me like a chill.Is this what there isto remember – the long daysroofing coops, the buildingof rooms on a cabin, the insignificant meal? The shadowsof moments mean everythingand nothing, the dyinglandscapes of rememberedhuman faces freezeinto a moment. My roomwas in the basement, wasknotty pine, back there,in diamondback country.The night swings overthe cold Pacific. I poura cup of coffee, heavyin my bones. Soon, this fineyoung woman will stare intothe face of her own sonor daughter, the yearsgone suddenly behind her.Will she remember onlythe ache, the immense satisfactionof that longing? May shebe happy, filledwith the essential,working in the twilight,on her knees, at autumn equinox,gathering the storiesof silence together,preparing to meet the winter.

A few small sails, barely moving,dot Fidalgo Bay. As the sun burns awaythe last pale clouds, a confluenceof robins descends to exploremy neighbor’s garden—brown grass, muddy beds and the lastfading roses of the year.